The Damsel
by Smidy
Summary: Once upon a time, Amelia Pond decided that fairy tales could just sod off. Truly.


_Right, I'm not really sure exactly where this fits in the whole Season 5 timeline. Probably between... Victory of the Daleks and The Time of Angels. I'm not sure. Whatever. My mind is still trying to compute the utter brilliance that was the Season 5 finale which, I'm relieved to announce, Australia FINALLY got tonight. Hooray. Hope it's ok :)  
_

* * *

Once upon a time, Amelia Pond decided that fairytales could just sod off.

Truly.

It was indescribable, _unfathomable_, the hatred she possessed for those stupid, cutesy little tales of utterly predictable, overly moral, everything's so _friggin'_ jolly, Mother Theresa, Oprah Winfrey, Daddy Warbucks sugary spun pieces of crap.

Plus, as her Aunt would say, the ever-recurring notion of the handsome Prince/intelligent brother/intuitive male animal/incredibly burly hunter saving the placidly and classically beautiful yet bewitched princess/naïve sister/idiotic young female upstart with a red coat/everyone, was indicative of an archaic patriarchal society, hellbent on the oppression and devaluation of women and the benefits that they can contribute to society.

Amy was sure that Ledworth nearly exploded when her Aunt proclaimed that at a monthly town meeting. Even more so because she followed up by declaring tearfully, over one of Mrs. Putnam's scones, that she believed her niece to be "a few squares short of a crocheted rug", her charming choice of euphemism for "mentally unstable".

Upon hearing this, Amy _did_ explode – causing quite commendable amounts of destruction on her short dash home. She lined up all the rubbish bins between the Meeting Hall and her house (there were 4) and gave them all a good kick. She stomped, military style, over the freshly planted petunias in the Town Gardens, kicked a hole through her neighbor's hedge and, making a quick, necessary detour home for props , gleefully shoved a pair of her Aunt's leopard print knickers over the head of the statue of their town's Great Pioneer, Edward Ledworth.

Pleased, she then went home and smashed all her Aunt's favourite porcelain water jugs, the orchestra inside her mind hitting its dizzying crescendo with the decimation of a Union Jack printed jug, dropped with a mock ceremonious solemnity from the second story window of her bedroom.

She grinned, feeling clear and awake and alive. Queen Victoria would, no doubt, be considerably "not amused."

But then she noticed the big, creaky trunk under her bed and defeated, she slid to the floor.

And she cried.

Full, angry tears rolled out of her eyes, yet she did not make a sound, desperately furious at herself and at this stupid, Charles-Dicken's-orphan, stereotypically-frustrated-teenager, corny-EastEnders-break-up –scene weakness.

She was _17_, for God's sake, hadn't she evolved enough, hadn't she_ grown up_ enough to acquire some sort of mental control over the spontaneous waterworks? Shouldn't she be able, after _all_ the psychiatrists, after _all_ the drugs, after _all_ the smarmy couch-y, smiley, You-Can-Trust-Me sessions and talks, after _all_ the ridicule and _all_ the biting (character building, she thought), shouldn't she be _capable_ of forgetting?

But no. It seemed that fate was a bitch. Or destinty. Or God. Or The Queen. Or Camilla. Or whoever the hell it was that people cursed when they were facing their doom or martyrdom in a film or novel.

Or fairytale.

* * *

It was impossible to forget. It _literally _was.

Whenever she wrote her name on one of those stupid psychiatrist forms, or at the bottom of one of those obligatory Christmas cards and post-biting apology letters that her Aunt _made_ her send, he seared himself onto her memory again, irrepressible, unstoppable, _fantastic_.

"Amelia Pond, like a name in a fairytale," he'd smiled, hair plastered across his forehead all boyish and charming, and clothes dripping from the magical water in the magical pool in the magical library of his magical box.

She hated him for that sometimes.

Because whilst her name was perhaps fitting of fairytale status, the actual girl, the _actual_ Amelia Pond, was not.

* * *

Once, back when she was earnest and eager and optimistic, she had cross-referenced all the villainous acts and unfortunate situations that befell the fairytale damsels with her own life's events. The results were quite promising.

Like Gretel, in Hansel and Gretel, she had been abandoned by her parents in the black, dodgy woods of England, with nothing but a handful of breadcrumb memories to grasp onto, and eventually, lose. They had escaped through a crumpled car and a vast tree trunk. She had been left to be smothered, be destroyed by her Aunt, the witch in the woods. Just without the cozy, gingerbread house, the glorious food and the initially benevolent demeanor. Her Aunt's house was made of weatherboards that creaked and shuddered and left eerie cracks in her wall. All they ate was porridge, specials from the shops and spinach. Also, her Aunt had _never_ been nice.

Like Little Red Riding Hood, with Amy's long, deep red hair substituting the cloak, each new psychiatrist meant a new sojourn into the woods, Amy desperate to disprove the 'wild ravings induced by an abnormally concentrated reaction to the death of her parents' theory that had cemented, then locked, then super-glued itself into everyone's brains.

In the end, her own doubts and their pounding logic, under the guise of the wolf, would gobble her protestations right up. The Hunter, in her fairytale, equipped not with an axe, but with a funny silver screwdriver, was nowhere to be found.

When she was 14, Psychiatrist No. 3 prescribed a trial drug to 'calm her delusions' and Amy fell asleep for some time. She existed, but didn't really think, didn't really experience, didn't really register, didn't really perform all the necessary functions of a true existence. It shut her up though, and the wicked witch, sitting behind his mahogany desk, with his blubbery face and all the equally blubbery faces of his wife and children grinning up at her, claimed success.

It took an immense effort from a Prince Charming of sorts to wake Sleeping Beauty from her spell.

He'd sit near her at school, hunch his shoulders and blush nervously whenever she'd look at him. They'd walk home together and rest awkwardly in her living room, never really sitting for fear of what familiarity might mean. He would talk to her, softly and gently, tell her stories and make her laugh and gradually… warm her.

Sure, she was positive that in the _actual_ fairytale, Prince Charming didn't have a stutter, wasn't embarrassed by her returning brashness and had a slightly more orthodox nose, but in her haze, he seemed pretty much perfect.

Now, looking back, she realizes with a slight giggle how absolutely, hilariously, _freakily_ perfect it would have been if she had finally, irrevocably broken through her sleep whilst he bent down over her bed after one of their late night discussions and kissed her gently, expertly on the lips. Or, you know, even kissed her at all.

In actual fact, the revelation had come when Prince Charming had caught her snogging Jimmy Harris behind the girl's toilets at school.

His face crumpled and his eyes snapped shut, body going rigid and teeth clenching mercilessly. Then he opened them again.

Amy looked, and she stopped.

And _it_ broke.

Wrenching herself away from Jimmy, she strode confidently, _clearly_ over to her Prince.

"Hey Rory," she grinned, eyes once again mischievous and sparkling. Then, she kissed him as well.

Jimmy protested loudly, Amy flipped the finger in the vague direction of his whining and Rory was the happiest man in the universe.

* * *

Presently, however, at nearly 19, Amy only knew bitterness. The evidence was overwhelming, inarguable, almost _ridiculous_, and yet, she was here, in dreary old Ledworth, whilst he, whilst the Raggedy Doctor flounced about all space and time, performing gallant rescues, observing unbelievable wonders and, no doubt, laughing in that rich, sunshine way that all heroes do.

She'd suffered hardships, she'd been alone, she had a Prince Charming. Ish.

Her Aunt sometimes sprung cleaning marathons on her that probably outshone all the sweeping and washing and dusting that Cinderella had ever done in her whole _bloody_ life, and if her popularity as a kiss-a-gram had any merit (which it assuredly did), her transformation from an ugly duckling into a graceful, beautiful and sexually adept swan was positively _epic_.

And once, she had even kissed a frog. For a dare.

They weren't nice anymore, fairytales.

They were consuming her.

So she turned to hate. A rollicking, seething, boiling secret hate that swarmed through her and that sometimes scared Rory and made her hit real imaginary friends on the head with cricket bats and then attach them to radiators and, later, friendly villagers' cars.

But that wasn't nice either.

* * *

She told the Doctor this, once, and he listened enraptured, silent, solemn, with brief, gut-wrenching flashes of guilt and self-hatred illuminating his eyes.

Just like a hero in a fairytale would.

She felt… odd, recounting this particular tale, for it seemed so swamped in bitterness and darkness and anger, and this grated uncomfortably against her, catching and becoming tangled in all the wonder and majesty and fantasticality of her new, travelling life.

He leant his forehead against hers, and looked searchingly into her eyes.

"Amy, I – please forgive me," he murmured.

She smiled kindly, eyes twinkling in a cutesy, utterly predictable, overly moral, everything's so _friggin'_ jolly, Mother Theresa, Oprah Winfrey, Daddy Warbucks sugary spun pieces of crap kind of way.

She was finally there.

Now, she thought, time for the part where the damsel forgives the hero and birds sing and violins swell and then the damsel takes the hero back to her room in the TARDIS and –

"Pond?" he inquired, confused.

She composed herself. "S' ok."

He beamed.

"_However_," he looked stricken once more, "it _was_ slightly challenging to be so benevolent and kindly when I kept on being distracted by _whatever the hell_ that is on your face."

"Hey!" he protested, "Fake moustaches are cool."

She raised an eyebrow.

He took it off.

She lay her head on his shoulder, and sighed, finally content. A shaft of light softly glinted about them and the TARDIS gently hummed her approval.

All was well.

"And then," she said, voice bolstered by the grandeur and momentous nature of the occasion, "they lived happily ever after." She smiled dreamily. The moment was so perfect, so warm, so genuine, so…

Somewhere next to her, she felt the Doctor snort and then pretend, oh so elegantly, to throw up.

"_What?"_ she hissed, and then punched him in the arm.

That set him off.

"I'm-I'm sorry," he chortled, "HA! But _really_-".

Fit of laughter.

"You-you said _that_! Out of-out of _everything_!"

Doctor knee-slapping and snorting.

"And then they lived happily ever after! HA! That's like-like, _perfect_!"

Doctor rolling on the floor.

Amy tapped her foot and crossed her arms and cleared her throat menacingly. The Doctor quieted, coughed nervously, straightened his bowtie and suspenders and sat down carefully next to her.

She waited.

"Sorry," he whispered quickly, anxiously, The Oncoming Storm cowering under the tempest in her eyes.

The damsel grinned triumphantly and sent him off, contrite, to make some tea, skipping off after him a moment later to ensure he didn't forget the biscuits.

And so they lived, happily - for _her_ ever after, anyway.


End file.
